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Sweet & Easy Vegan: Treats Made with Whole Grains and Natural Sweeteners
Azioni libro
Inizia a leggere- Editore:
- Chronicle Books Digital
- Pubblicato:
- Sep 7, 2012
- ISBN:
- 9781452121222
- Formato:
- Libro
Descrizione
Informazioni sul libro
Sweet & Easy Vegan: Treats Made with Whole Grains and Natural Sweeteners
Descrizione
- Editore:
- Chronicle Books Digital
- Pubblicato:
- Sep 7, 2012
- ISBN:
- 9781452121222
- Formato:
- Libro
Informazioni sull'autore
Correlati a Sweet & Easy Vegan
Anteprima del libro
Sweet & Easy Vegan - Robin Asbell
Copyright
INTRODUCTION
Everybody loves sweets. Omnivores and vegans alike have a deep desire for the occasional treat, and why not? A cookie here and there adds joy to life, and if your diet is generally balanced, it really isn’t a problem. Killjoys may recommend giving up eating sweet treats, but the fact is, most people like them: you like them, your family likes them, and they aren’t going away anytime soon.
This book is my answer to the sweets craving, in which the sweets you eat are as nutritious and healthful as I can make them without sacrificing the pleasure of sweetness. I’m not claiming that eating these treats will make the pounds melt away; I’m simply trying to make sure that when you decide to eat a cookie or other sweets, they will be packed with real food, like whole grains, fruit, and nuts—and sweeteners in as unrefined and natural a state as possible. Junk food is just empty calories, but these calories are nutrient-dense. In fact, you may find that eating high-fiber, nutritious treats is so much more satisfying that you eat less of them as a result.
You don’t have to adhere to any particular diet, vegan or otherwise, to enjoy these treats. I found that one of the great joys in developing the recipes for this book was sharing my treats with friends, neighbors, and coworkers who weren’t particularly vegan or into whole grains. Their glowing and enthusiastic praise was encouraging. Beyond letting me know these recipes are truly tasty, the positive response proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that people would come around once they actually got a bite. The proof is in the pudding—or the scone, cake, cookie, or biscuit, as the case may be.
CHOOSING SWEETNESS
For most bakers, the main sweeteners are white sugar and brown sugar (which is simply white sugar with some molasses mixed in). These sweeteners make life simple. Although they are familiar and therefore easy to cook with, they have some serious downsides. White sugar is made from sugarcane juice or sugar beets that have been refined to remove essentially all vitamin and mineral content, and the spritz of molasses that coats brown sugar contributes almost no nutrients. Whether in the form of refined sugar or high-fructose corn syrup, Americans eat an average of almost ¹/2 cup/110 g of sugar per day and by some estimates the average person in the United Kingdom consumes his or her own weight in sugar each year—plus 20 lb/9 kg of corn syrup. That’s an awful lot of calories to dedicate to something with no nutrients other than fast-burning carbohydrates.
Still, our desire for sweetness is a natural part of our physiology. In our not-so-distant hunter-gatherer past, sweetness was a signal that a fruit or vegetable was ripe and at its most nutritious. Finding a patch of ripe berries or a date palm dropping sugary fruit was a chance to get valuable nutrients that perhaps hadn’t been available for a while. Sitting down to a feast and stuffing in as much as you could was a smart way to survive. Unfortunately, that drive has remained even as the world around us has become a twenty-four-hour buffet, too often filled with refined, processed, nutrient-poor foodstuffs. Instead of the scent of wild strawberries leading to a belly stuffed with nutritious fruit, rich in fiber, vitamins, and phyto-nutrients, a sniff of Cinnabon or a bag of Halloween candy can lead to a binge on sugary, high-fat foods.
It should come as no surprise that manufacturers know what you like and are happy to sell it to you. Sugar and high-fructose corn syrup are cheap and make junk food taste good. They hit your bloodstream with a surge of pure sugar, almost like a drug. For vegans, there’s also the downside that in some cases the processing of refined cane sugar involves filtration through bone char. The Vegetarian Resource Group estimates that 20 percent of the white sugar sold in the United States is filtered this way. The best answer to your innate drive for sweets is to make your own treats using real, whole foods and sweeteners that are as close to their natural state as possible, which ensures that they deliver not just sweetness, but also superior nutrition.
REAPING THE REWARDS OF SUPERIOR NUTRITION
Before refined sweeteners became such a cheap, readily available source of sweetness, people found other ways to sweeten foods. Those less-refined sweeteners are less like drugs and more like food. They are wholesome and still contain many of the nutrients of the plants they were made from. A study published in the Journal of the American Dietetic Association in 2009 took a look at just one nutritional difference between sugar and alternative sweeteners: antioxidant content. The researchers found that there are no antioxidants in sugar or corn syrup, but varying degrees of antioxidant activity in natural sweeteners (other than agave syrup). Molasses, date sugar, brown rice syrup, and barley malt syrup had the highest antioxidant content, while maple syrup and rapadura cane sweeteners were just below them. The researchers concluded that replacing the average daily intake of refined sweeteners with antioxidant-rich alternative sweeteners could increase antioxidant consumption as much as eating a serving of blueberries or nuts.
Navinda Seeram, a plant scientist at the University of Rhode Island, has devoted a great deal of research to maple syrup. In 2011, he announced that he has identified fifty-four beneficial compounds in maple syrup, some with antioxidant and anti-inflammatory properties. The maple trees apparently produce these chemicals as part of their immune response to the wounds made to tap the syrup, and when we consume these compounds, they act to boost our immunity, as well. In addition, maple syrup is high in the minerals manganese and zinc, which also function as antioxidants and are crucial for many processes in the body.
The terms evaporated cane juice
and dehydrated cane juice
may be applied to a broad range of alternative sweeteners. All have the advantage that you can substitute them, in an equal ratio, for white or brown sugar. Some are made by fully refining sugarcane juice and then adding back in a bit of the molasses removed during the refining process. These sugars are shiny and crystalline, a sure sign that they are heavily processed. Other cane sugar products are superior, particularly rapadura, a type of sugar made by drying sugarcane juice, so it still contains most of the original molasses content, along with its minerals and antioxidants. Sucanat is a brand name for this type of sugar. I suggest that you choose Sucanat or rapadura—just be aware that these sugars have a stronger flavor. They also don’t melt the way that refined sugars do, but they do bring distinctive and delicious sugarcane flavor to sweet treats.
CONSIDERATIONS WHEN SUBSTITUTING ALTERNATIVE SWEETENERS
Beyond having slightly more assertive flavors, alternative sweeteners bring other qualities to baked goods, and sometimes recipes must be adjusted. Dry sweeteners like Sucanat, granular palm sugar, and evaporated cane juice work most like granular sugars. If you aren’t strict about avoiding refined sugar, you can use brown sugar in recipes calling for Sucanat or palm sugar. Traditional palm sugar, sometimes called coconut sugar, is a grainy paste; it’s typically available in Asian markets. It falls between dry and liquid sweeteners in terms of how it’s used. Because it’s such a wonderful food, I like to use it often. It’s a little trickier to work with, as you have to chop, grate, or crush before use so that it can be mixed in. If that seems like a pain, use Sucanat. Palm sugar paste is easiest to use in dishes like puddings and sauces, where it’s melted in a liquid.
I like to use liquid sweeteners like maple syrup, brown rice syrup, and agave syrup because they’re generally less refined than other sweeteners and contain more nutrients. However, substituting them in recipes does require that you adjust the liquids, usually cutting them by approximately ¹/4 to ¹/2 cup/60 to 120 ml per 1 cup/ 240 ml of liquid sweetener used. Many of the whole sweeteners, both liquid and dry forms, brown more quickly than white sugar, so it’s important to bake at moderate temperatures.
Part of the beauty of working with natural products is their uniqueness. Each of the natural sweeteners used here has its own flavors, moisture content, and level of sweetness. For example, brown rice syrup is less sweet than an equal amount of refined sugar, whereas maple syrup and agave syrup are sweeter. On the other hand, the stronger flavor of maple syrup gives a baked good a very different character than the more neutral taste of agave. In this book, I have chosen the sweetener that gives the sweetness and flavor appropriate to each recipe.
THE BENEFITS OF COMBINING SWEETENERS WITH WHOLE FOODS
So we have these wonderful alternative sweeteners that contain many or all of the nutrients in the plants or plant products from which they’re derived. They add good things to your diet, as well as sweetness. The next issue to consider is the effect that these sweeteners have on blood sugar. While this is a complicated phenomenon, a few simple things can help you to navigate the choices before you. First, you may be interested in the glycemic index. This scale, originally devised to help diabetics better understand the effects that food choices had on their health, rates how quickly the sugars from various foods enter the bloodstream. Basically, small amounts of single foods were fed to subjects, and their blood sugar levels were monitored for the following two hours. Anything under 56 is considered low. Refined sugar has a glycemic index of 64, whereas in almost all cases alternative sweeteners have lower values.
Nutrients in Various Sweeteners (mg/100g)
Phosphorus
Palm sugar: 79
Agave syrup: 7
Honey: 4
Maple syrup: 2
Brown sugar: 4
Refined white sugar: 0
Evaporated cane juice: 31.7
Potassium
Palm sugar: 1030
Agave syrup: 1
Honey: 52
Maple syrup: 204
Brown sugar: 133
Refined white sugar: 2.5
Evaporated cane juice: 742
Calcium
Palm sugar: 8
Agave syrup: 1.5
Honey: 6
Maple syrup: 67
Brown sugar: 83
Refined white sugar: 6
Evaporated cane juice: 108.9
Magnesium
Palm sugar: 29
Agave syrup: 1
Honey: 2
Maple syrup: 14
Brown sugar: 9
Refined white sugar: 1
Evaporated cane juice: 8
Sodium
Palm sugar: 45
Agave syrup: 1
Honey: 4
Maple syrup: 9
Brown sugar: 28
Refined white sugar: 1
Evaporated cane juice: 0.33
Chloride
Palm sugar: 470
Agave syrup: 0
Honey: 0
Maple syrup: 0
Brown sugar: 16
Refined white sugar: 10
Evaporated cane juice: 0
Sulfer
Palm sugar: 26
Agave syrup: 0
Honey: 0
Maple syrup: 0
Brown sugar: 0
Refined white sugar: 0
Evaporated cane juice: 0
Zinc
Palm sugar: 2
Agave syrup: 0.2
Honey: 0.2
Maple syrup: 4.2
Brown sugar: 0
Refined white sugar: 0.1
Evaporated cane juice: 1.5
Manganese
Palm sugar: 0.1
Agave syrup: 0.1
Honey: 0.1
Maple syrup: 3.3
Brown sugar: 0.1
Refined white sugar: 0
Evaporated cane juice: 0
Iron
Palm sugar: 2
Agave syrup: 1
Honey: 0.4
Maple syrup: 1.2
Brown sugar: 1.7
Refined white sugar: 0.1
Evaporated cane juice: 4.29
Copper
Palm sugar: 0.23
Agave syrup: 0.1
Honey: 0
Maple syrup: 0.1
Brown sugar: 0
Refined white sugar: 0
Evaporated cane juice: 0.2
Thiamin
Palm sugar: 0.41
Agave syrup: 0
Honey: 0
Maple syrup: 0
Brown sugar: 0
Refined white sugar: 0
Evaporated cane juice: 13.8
Vitarnin C
Palm sugar: 23.4
Agave syrup: 0.5
Honey: 0.5
Maple syrup: 0
Brown sugar: 0
Refined white sugar: 0
Evaporated cane juice: 79
Sources: Comparison of the Elemental Content of Three Sources of Edible Sugar.
analyzed by PCA-TAL, Sept. 11, 2000 (MI Secretaria et al., 2003), in parts per million (ppm or mg/L): and nutrutiondata.com
In practice, though, we don’t sit down to a spoonful of maple syrup. We eat our sweeteners in concert with other foods. And those other foods can have profound effects on blood sugar as well. Fiber and fat both have the effect of slowing the absorption of whatever sweetener you consume. That means that the combinations of whole grains, healthful fats, and whole fiber-rich nuts, seeds, and fruits that make up the treats in this book work to keep your blood sugar on an even keel, even while you are enjoying cookies and cake. In fact, if the recipes in this book motivate you to eat more whole grains, you will reap many benefits, beyond stable blood sugar.
WHY WHOLE GRAINS
It’s hard to miss the messages recommending that you eat more whole grains. Bread and cereal commercials tout the whole-grain credentials of various breads, cereals, and other products. However, despite all the good reasons to eat whole grains, people have been hesitant to adopt them into their diets. Changing food habits is hard, and many people stick with refined products out of habit or because they’re convinced that whole grains just don’t taste as good.
HEALTH BENEFITS OF WHOLE GRAINS
Whether you are vegan or not, eating whole grains is really, really good for you. Study after study has found
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